Volunteer Work Wins Award For Girl

April 28, 1985|By Terry Osinski of The Sentinel Staff

OVIEDO — Letters from parents, comments from teachers and the obvious affection of her charges helped name Reba Yarborough the 1984-1985 student volunteer for the 10-county East Central Florida region, which includes Osceola County.

She received her award recently at the 9th Annual Florida School Volunteer Conference at Sea World's Wyndham Hotel.

Since September, Yarborough has spent two hours a day, five days a week assisting teacher Glenda Wooldridge with the county's first manipulative kindergarten pilot program -- a hands-on method of teaching that substitutes tangible learning materials for books and work sheets.

Part of Yarborough's duties include creating the course material Wooldridge uses in class. A week's worth of Y-work -- yellow finger paintings, yarn- constructed letter Ys and crudely drawn yaks cover the classroom's stucco- block walls. Wooldridge said the drawings help the students relate real- world uses to the alphabet.